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Social Media Is Driving Australian Growth Overseas

Global Marketing News – 12th August 2015

Social media is driving Australian growth overseas

Australian businesses are embracing social media as a way to connect with overseas customers.

Research by DHL has revealed that 75% of Australian exporters use social media as an international marketing tool.

Facebook is by far the most popular social network, with 71% using it to target international customers. LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter were also used by a significant number of Australian exporters, with around 35% saying they used these social networks.

The Australian export business is doing well, with 55% of businesses questioned saying they’d experienced growth in the last year, with 66% saying they expected international growth in the coming year.

New Zealand is the most popular export destination, with 57% of Australian exporters saying they exported to their neighbour.

The US is close behind in second place, with just over half saying they exported to the country.

Smartphone ownership increasing in Argentina

Smartphone ownership is rapidly increasing in Argentina, according to research by Carrier y Asociados.

31 million Argentineans have a mobile phone, equivalent to 71% of the population.

The vast majority of new mobile phones bought today are smartphones, accounting for 84% of mobile phone sales last year.

This is a dramatic increase from just 5 years ago, when just 14% of mobile phones sold were smartphones.

This trend is expected to continue, with almost 20 million Argentinean smartphone owners predicted by 2019, up from the present-day 13 million.

The majority of these smartphones are running on slow internet speeds, however, with only 9% of people saying their phone used 4G, far below the Latin American average of 23%.

Visa trials mobile payments app in India

Visa has announced that it is launching a trial of a mobile payments app in India.

The app, called mVisa, will allow users to make small payments and also transfer money between two Visa accounts.

Around 20,000 merchants and 4 banks have signed up to the pilot scheme, which will launch in the Indian city of Bangalore in September.

Smartphone ownership in India has a growing rapidly. Around 160 million Indians currently own a smartphone, with this figure predicted to grow at a rate of 23% per year until 2017.

With the majority of Indians using their smartphones to access the internet, Visa hopes it will be a small step for them to start doing online payments via their mobile phones too.

Shopwings closes down in Germany

The Rocket Internet-backed grocery delivery start-up Shopwings has closed down in Germany.

The closure has been blamed on a lack of interest in grocery deliveries in Germany, as well as regulatory hurdles following a court ruling that the company had to list ingredients for every single one of its 18,000 products on its website.

Rocket Internet has said that it will now focus on expanding Shopwings in South East Asian markets including Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines.

Rocket Internet is famous for helping to launch internet-related companies in new markets based on proven business models.

Video bundle launches in the Philippines

And finally, the Filipino telecoms company Globe Telecom has launched a video bundle in partnership with both YouTube and Dailymotion.

With the bundle, users will be able to watch 100 MB worth of YouTube videos. They will also have access to Dailymotion videos, although it is unclear how these will be limited.

The bundle aims to encourage more Filipinos to get online using their mobile phones.

The Philippines currently has quite a low internet penetration rate, with just 38% having access to the internet.

Globe Telecom is not the only company to try to get more Filipinos online. Earlier this year, Facebook launched its Internet.org initiative in the Philippines. The Internet.org project aims to provide key basic internet services to mobile users for free.

Cal O'Connell

Lead Videographer at Webcertain

Cal is the Lead Videographer at Webcertain. He presents the daily Global Marketing News Bulletin as well as working behind the scenes as a video editor and production member. With 6 years of experience as a professional filmmaker and videographer, Cal provides Webcertain with the ability to create video content for its ever-expanding catalogue of video content.